Softball Practice

February 20th, 2010

I got up and headed to Seattle for softball practice with the softball team I went to San Diego with last October. We practiced for about two and a half hours. I didn’t hit the ball very well, but I only had about fifteen hacks. I am rusty in the field right now too.

When practice was over I headed home. I got some food along the way as well as fueling up the rig. I spent the rest of the day the house watching some TV and taking a nap. I was tired from the lack of sleep and took the opportunity to have an afternoon nap.

Mom and Bill came home around two in the morning. I was getting tired and went to bed shortly after that.

Keith’s House Warming

February 19th, 2010

I slept in this morning a little bit which was nice. I have been getting up at eleven to noon daily over the last few weeks. It is a dramatic change from getting up at eight o’clock daily.

I was all ready to go already so I just loaded up and headed to the SO. I had to write up two tickets I issued last night. Then I was off to Keith’s house for his house warming party.

The drive over wasn’t too bad, but once I hit the Seattle area it slowed down. It was five o’clock in the evening.

I got to Keith’s around six o’clock. I hung out playing with Apollo and chatting until people started arriving around seven.

As people arrived we hung out in the kitchen talking. Anton was talking about being a police officer. We talked about that for a while. Other showed up and we ate then started to play video games. It was a good time hanging out with Keith. I really like hanging out with him.

As I was driving over I was thinking more about my future. I am really enjoying being a cop. I have put in a lot of hours over the last two weeks since being first class.

I have been thinking more about being a cop and getting out of the other things I do. I have sort of gotten bored with the typical natural deaths we deal with as well as the drunk college students. Maybe it there were more fires I would be more excited about firefighting, but lately it had been SSDD. I am looking for more variety. But I wonder if police work will become boring to me at some point too.

I have thought about getting my ankle taken care of and then doing a lot of working out in order to be able to easily pass the physical agility test for being a cop, then applying at places on the West side where the pay can be as high as eighty grand a year, after five years. That is something I could live on. That would be a huge change in my life, moving from Pullman and doing only one job. But I know I could get on some softball teams over here so I would have that going for me.

I haven’t told anyone else about these thoughts, but I am going to explore them and see how things go with the career job at the fire department. I know if I did that I wouldn’t be the next coroner of Whitman County, but I feel like being a cop. That has been something I wanted to do for a long long time.

No Trip To Renton Today

February 18th, 2010

The plan is to drive out to Renton today. But before I got going I wanted to get some M&Ms and Diet Pepsi for Foster. He is back at The Deuce. I also got Reiber a custard filled donut. I delivered the stuff for Foster to the Deuce and got into a conversation with Dragoo while I was there. That lasted a while. By the time I was getting ready to leave it was nearly four o’clock, so I decided to stay in Pullman tonight and hit the road.

I went home and got my uniform on and then went to the SO to get a car. I wrote up my reports to get caught up and then hit the road. I went out twenty-six. I hit two-seventy. I stopped by station one to drop off Reiber’s donut. I wrote a couple tickets tonight.

When I was coming back to Colfax I saw a car that looked like it was driving poorly. I followed it and pulled it over. I was wasn’t sure about the alcohol usage and the driver admitted to drinking a couple beers. I called Brown who came up and helped me out. With his help it was determined the guy was okay. As we were clearing that we heard something happening in Colfax.

We went back to provide back up and search for a suspect. We were there for about an hour working that when the suspect was found and taken to jail. I called it a night and went home. It was a good night for me.

Another Night on the Road

February 17th, 2010

I got my bi-weekly column created and sent in to the Daily News. This week was about the death of the police officers and the shooting of them in the Puget Sound region since last October.

After I was doing getting that completed and sent it, I headed to Colfax to work the road. I got a message from BKunz who said he was going to be coming through Pullman today and wanted to see if I wanted to meet up. Of course I did.

I got some papers and started to serve those. I had one in Colfax, one in Endicott, one in Colton, and finally one in Pullman. I got them all attempted or served until the Pullman one. I met up with Brandon before I attempted to serve it.

He came in the area to help a cousin move to Lewiston. So we had dinner together. He looks as good as he always has. He is such a genuine and nice person. I met him about sixteen years ago when he was a freshman at WSU. He was my next door neighbor. We played softball together as well as other things. As it turned out, later in life we shared the passion for firefighting. He is now a full-time firefighter.

It was very nice to see him in person and hang out with him for a while. I hope this softball season we will get a chance to play together at least once.

Following dinner with Brandon I did my final paper service. Then I hit the road going various places. It was pretty relaxing.

When I was done for the night I went to the SO to complete my paperwork. Dan and Bryce were there. We talked about the Cougs for a while. I headed out after getting most of my paperwork done.

Computer Test in Liberty Lake

February 16th, 2010

This morning started off with a trip to Liberty Lake for an initial screening for a job. It was a written test that covered several topics I had no idea about. I talked to Jon about it afterwards and he pretty much said some of the things they were asking was pointless and worthless. It took about three hours of total drive time and about forty minutes when I was there.

After the interview I went to Colfax for patrolling. I went North via Endicott and St. John. I was burning some time before fire training in Colfax. I showed up a little late because I stopped by the funeral home where Pete was going over a case that had taken place a few hours earlier. He went over the findings with me.

I went to Colfax Fire and we did some stuff on ropes, knotts, and rigging set ups. When that was done I hit the road again and worked until two o’clock AM. It was a pretty quiet day. I wrote everyone warnings rather than tickets today.

Good Training

February 15th, 2010

I spent most of the morning in bed. I think I am getting caught up from my last few days. I have been spending a lot of time working and not so much sleeping. I had the ringer on my phone turned off to get as much sleep as possible. It was very nice.

I got up just before one and started my day. I had to get the slings for the shotguns and the pizza for dinner for tonight. I went to Walmart and then called Phil about the slings. He said he found two of them in the reserve closet so he thought that maybe we wouldn’t need to buy any. He said I should hold off.

I called in the pizza order and then went to the fire station and worked on getting my the CPR babies put together. I went to Papa Murphy’s and got the pizza and dropped them off at the station. I decided to get one more and had one of the guys on the shift go pick it up.

I went home and got my uniform on. I started to cook the pizza. We were eating pizza and talking about our “training” for tonight. It was based on elevators and the keys for them. But that was just a ruse for the real training. That was going to be a drill that we would play off as a real situation in order to see what things we need to work on. It was also to be a wake up call for everyone to make sure we are not being complacent on fire alarms and calls.

What happened is the phone rang and the Lt. got it. He said the Captain got a call from Community Hall for the smell of burning plastic. We would go up there and people would believe that we were really going on such a call. He set up command as normal. Then after a bit he said they had a room and contents fire and they were working to get someone down the stairs. He asked the engine crew to get water and hook to the FDC. He had Rescue get the high-rise pack and respond to the North East corner. There were some issues doing things quickly and it took some time to get everything done. So it was a chance for us to see what we needed to do for the future.

I think everyone learned a lot. We have two hose packs for the high-rise. But the area is tight. When you pull the hose out it is hard. Parrish set them in a different way to see if it was easier. But as I pulled they got stuck on the gated wye. As I pulled it flew out and hit me in the head. I was wearing a helmet so it didn’t hurt, but it was good that I was wearing a helmet! We got the rig back in service and then did some walk through stuff of the FDC’s on a couple buildings around Community Hall.

We went back to the station and finished our dinner and did the rig checks. I have a first-round job interview tomorrow in Liberty Lake. So I am not going to stay up too late. I scheduled myself to be up there at ten o’clock AM.

I spoke with Kuhrt today and he told me they may need to hire a temp to work as a WSU cop for a year as one of their officers will be deployed. He suggested I send a letter of interest to the Chief if I am interested in doing in. I sure am. So I am going to talk to the Chief tomorrow about it.

Summer Softball Meeting

February 14th, 2010

I had a meeting with some of the guys for this upcoming seasons’ summer softball team. We met at Zeppoz at noon for that. We talked about the players we would have and that we want to play in a lot of tournaments.

After the meeting Christopher and I stayed up there and bowled two games. It was fun to hang out with him. He plays on my IM team and will be on the team is summer as well. I am excited to get out there and play some ball. The bowling went well for Christopher. I did my normal thing. I had some good frames and a lot of missed opportunities.

After bowling I went home and got my uniform on for working the road. I went to the SO and wrote a supplemental report for the search warrant. I hung out in the office for a couple hours helping out there. Then I went to the hospital for an Inmate who was taken there. I was at the hospital for just under two hours.

I went to Subway and got dinner and then I hit the road. I really only had just over two hours to go play. I hit the county roads near Pullman and worked SR two-seventy. I made a couple stops. I wrote one ticket on the night. As always it was pretty quiet when I was out there.

Long Day at PFD

February 13th, 2010

After only about two hours of sleep I made my way to the fire department to teach a first aid class. There were six people in it. It was a good group and I wasn’t as tired as I would have thought I would be. I had some Five-Hour Energy and pop to help out.

Upon completion of the class I got the stuff decontaminated and put away. Then I went to the Deuce to meet up with one of the new guys. I have heard some things from others and I wanted to talk to him about it. Mainly, he has no experience in the fire department, but does have some experience with some stuff in the EMS field. He doesn’t know some of the ins and outs of the fire services. One being that no matter what you knew in your last department you have to prove yourself in your new department. One thing that helps is listening to people whether you think you know what they are going to tell you or not. I wanted to make sure he understood this so he would fit in. I want to see him do well and if someone doesn’t tell him things then you can’t expect him to know them on his own. I incorporated this with some drive time.

When we were done with the drive time we got come rig checks done. It was a Saturday night, but it wasn’t crazy busy. We did run a couple calls through out the night, but for the most part it was pretty quiet.

Happy Twenty-Fifth KB

February 12th, 2010

At five I was going over to Kevin’s for a surprise birthday for him. I got him a card and gift certificate. I went to his place. BKoe was already there. There were about nine others there. We had some cake and hung out for about an hour. They left to go to a casino and I went to work at the County.

I was working with Larson tonight. I hit the road and got some dinner with the others and I was waiting for Larson to get to the SO. We got a chance to serve a search warrant.

I was the first one in the door. I did the roll I was assigned to do. After we were done Larson and I went to the SO to process all the evidence. It took several hours for us to do the computer and paperwork. I didn’t get out of the SO until five in the morning. That sucks because I have to teach first aid tomorrow morning. I wasn’t planning on being out that late.

When I was done I went to the fire station to get my class set up in case I wake up late.

Meeting and Patrolling

February 11th, 2010

I met up with Larson to go out patrolling with him. We met up around one thirty at the SO. I planned on having him drive. Today was his first shift as a second class officer so he said he would prefer if I drove to start. We worked our way North on one-ninety-five. Then we went out the Pine City-Malden road. We hit Pine City and Malden along the way. I ran him through my incident from the night before. We then hit SR twenty-three out to the County line. Then back into Lamont and explored out there. When we got back to the Pine City-Malden road Ross started driving. He went into St. John to explore and off to Endicott. We ran some traffic on the way back towards Colfax.

At five-thirty we got back to the station and chatted with the others before our meeting. I got my notepad and made my way to the conderence room. The meeting was pretty short. Then it was DT training. We went to the workout room and practiced some defensive tactics for about two hours.

I hit the road again making my way to Tekoa. I patrolled up there for about an hour and made a couple stops before heading back to Colfax. It was a pretty quiet night. I am still getting use to being first class. It is strange to be out on my own and making my own decisions about where to go and what to do.

Another Night on Patrol

February 10th, 2010

Since becoming first class I have spent a lot of time patrolling the county. I am sort of a white cloud. Things do not happen when I am on duty. But I patrol around areas that I don’t think get covered all the time. I usually get an hour served in Albion or Tekoa. I also try to hit several county roads while I am out.

Tonight was no different. It was quiet without any major calls. But if something does come out I try to pick it up and do it.

I had a call for a nine-0ne-one hang up. I went to that. Later there was a domestic that went out. I responded, but it turned out to be verbal and I cleared that pretty quick.

Hanging with Drew

February 9th, 2010

This morning was our monthly staff meeting at the fire department. I got my pop and headed in for the meeting. They normally last two to three hours. We cover things that deal with the fire department making recommendations and bringing up issues to be looked at.

I had to leave just before noon for a dentist appointment. It was my normal semi-annual cleaning. That went well and it went quick.

When I was done with that I did drive time on the engine with Victor. I am working with him and one other guy to get their engine drive time in order to become engineers.

This evening was HazMat Training. It was held at the Deuce. The training was pretty short and sweet. It ended with a game of Jeopardy. The prizes for getting questions correct included winning some candy.

After that was done Drew and I went to My Office. We had some dinner and beer. We talked about various things. This was the second time we went out. It is nice to get a chance to get out and hang out with Drew.

Another CUB Walk Through

February 8th, 2010

This morning I had to drag myself out of bed to get to Lewiston for an oil change on my vehicle. I also have two things to fix. My UConnect mic isn’t hooked up. There is a piece of weather stripping that didn’t come on the vehicle on the drivers door. I was there for about two hours. As it turned out the weather stripping and the mic module are both on back order. So those didn’t get done. But the oil change did and it was free because it was my first one down there after buying a car.

For fire training tonight we did a tour of Whitcom and then to the CUB for a walk through. We hit all the floors and looked at fire related things, such as elevators for resetting, standpipes, the fire pump, etc. It took about an hour and a half to go through the building.

I was on duty tonight as well, but I was on engine. We didn’t have any engine runs at all. That allowed me to sleep through the night.

Super Party for the Bowl

February 7th, 2010

After sleeping in until the noon hour I finally started my day, but I was running late. I was suppose to be at the Morgan’s by this time. So I hurried up and got ready. I got my uniform loaded into the Bumblebee. I headed off to the store to get some M&Ms. As I was getting to Dissmores I saw it was packed. The parking lot had people driving around and there was no obvious spaces available. I thought Safeway might not be as bad. But I was wrong. It was packed too. I got my stuff and headed to Ron and Heather’s place.

There were a lot of people already there. I had some food and talked for a small period of time. Because I was running late I decided that I wasn’t going to stay very long.

I got down to the station around two in the afternoon. I sat down for a game of seven-card-no-peak-baseball. I lost, but I bet a lot of quarters along the way. I ended up knocking some other people out of the game.

We stopped after that game for a while and had some food as it was getting close to game time. We watched the game for a little bit as everyone was eating. Then it back to playing. I won a couple pots, but I was draining money. The thing about poker there is pretty much everyone plays to the end of many of the games. There are very few tight people.

As it was getting towards the end of the poker night and the game there was a large amount of money in the pot. We were playing R.F. and there was a fair amount of money in the pot. I would guess around ten bucks. With the two dollar limit, it was five to one odds more or less. So I stayed in with three hearts and no wilds. That is sort of crazy to do. But I got a heart and a wild for a flush. That was enough to win. That win put me up on the night.

Once that was done I went to the SO and completed the last couple paragraphs of my report for last Sunday’s case. Then I hit the road. I went North and made a stop. I saw four cars go by me at between eighty-two and seventy-nine. But with all the traffic around me I wasn’t able to get to them before I lost sight of them. So I continued through Colfax hoping they would continue their speeding ways and I would pace them. But that wasn’t to be. I did get one for expired tabs on the South side of Colfax. Then I went to Albion and worked there for a while. It was very dead so I went to some other county roads outside of Pullman.

While out there I was dispatched to a Nine-One-One hang up near Palouse. Everything was okay there. I went to Palouse-Cove road. But I only saw two cars the whole time on the road. I sat and ran stationary radar and read some RCW’s while I waited.

I went South to Airport road and Two-Seventy. I was out on Two-Seventy when I heard a domestic get put out in Palouse. I started to head that way. I took it easy going through Pullman and then hit Twenty-Seven. I got on scene shortly after the Town Marshall.

The night was drawing to a close, so I worked my way back to the SO because I had paperwork to complete before going home for the night.

I am First Class!!!

February 6th, 2010

This morning it was an early morning for me. I have switched backing to being a late night guy, but I have to change that at some point in the future. But for now I guess I will let it remain.

I went to Colfax for the EMT class. I was helping Jeff with the class. He did pretty much all the teaching. I pretty much just watched and helped with the skills portion of the class. Several of us went to Subway for lunch.

After class I was off to the SO for the daylight and nighttime check off’s. I need two daytime and two nighttime traffic stops to complete my transition to first class. But no one was around. I was worried about that. Jordan showed up and Jimmy had called me back. I asked if Jordan would be able to check me off. Jimmy said that was okay.

Jordan and I hit the road. I made three stops really quickly. The final stop took me a while to find, but I got it. With those four complete I went to the SO to work on my report from last Sunday’s case. Cooper said that I can now go out on my own. It feels so great.

One of the first things I did was get the report nearly completed. That needed to be done before I went out to play. We all went to Subway for dinner. That was my second trip there.

Following that I went up North. I worked the Pine City-Malden road. I also worked in Tekoa for over an hour before calling it a night. I got several tickets tonight and while working stationary radar on the Pine City-Malden road I was able to get a lot of RCW’s read.

One Huge Step to First Class

February 5th, 2010

This afternoon Melcher and I were hitting the road again. Any time now I was going to be called in for my oral board for first class. McNannay was there and got me some of the forms I needed to have filled out. I worked on getting signatures from people between the time Melcher and I were on the road.

We made a trip to Martin Hall with a juvenile who was trying to blame his problems on other people. At one point he said that his mom told him if he got in trouble at school she would turn him in to the juvenile department and he would spend his weekened at Martin Hall. He then said he thought she was bluffing. This kid needs to grow up some more. He is old enough to know better.

Following that transport we went to serve some papers in Colfax and Pullman. We got dinner and then worked Albion time. As we were there we got called into the SO. When we were there we were both given the test to move to first class.

We both passed it. The only thing left to do is two nighttime and two daylight traffic stops. I spent the next couple hours working on my report for last Sunday’s case.

Transfer with Colfax

February 4th, 2010

I spent a lot of the day reading through my notes from the reserve academy. Before I was going to go to Colfax I got a call to see if I could help with a transfer. I said I could. So I went down early and did a transfer to Spokane.

When I got back I went to the SO and hoped to get my first class board. But it didn’t happen. Cooper looked over my arrests, hours, and whatnot. He said as far as he was concerned I could go up, but we needed to make it official. So one weekend when I was working they would do my board, but in the mean time I could go out on my own if I wanted. I was pretty stoked, but I still wasn’t done with the board. So I had to get that out of the way.

I went back to Pullman a lot earlier than I thought I would be back. I was on call, but I didn’t get any calls to roll on. I contacted Melcher about hitting the road tomorrow. We are going to go out around four and hit it. I am excited to get out on my own, but I also like working with the other guys. So I figured if I want to work and others don’t I will work, otherwise I will go out with the others. It is just the ability to choose that I like.

I Quit

February 3rd, 2010

I spent some of the time this morning after I woke up working on my column. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to write about, so I spent a while doing research. I ended up using an article I worked on several months ago. I finished it off and sent it in.

Then I went to get some lunch at Pizza Pipeline. I was going to go to the bank, but I held off. I am going to wait to get my check for the week and do both at the same time.

I also worked on my taxes. MH didn’t send me a W-two. And I may not get one. So I had to try to figure everything out for myself. At one point I made an error in doing a Ten-Ninety-Nine. I more or less doubled my income which caused my taxes to be nearly twelve grand more than it should have been. I was worried about that, then when I fixed the problem I was only in the hole about fourteen hundred bucks. That sucks, but it is way better than what it first looked like.

I got called in for a transfer to Lewiston with Pauly. It went off without a hitch. When I got done doing that I went to Kuhrt’s to help him with some computer problems he was having. I was there for about an hour.

I got home and did some research on jobs. I am now jobless and I never heard anything back from SR. So I guess they really don’t care too much about my departure.

Switched to WordPress

February 2nd, 2010

After being with blogger since the beginning of the existence of my blog, I have made the switch. I didn’t want to, but Blogger said they were going to stop doing the FTP posts. That is the method in which I would put up my entries. So I first had to research the multiple blog systems out there and choose one. I was going to go with an ASP.Net version, but after finding WordPress and seeing the layout, I went with it. I want to have a similar look to my old blog as far as the right-hand sidebar goes.

I spent some time working on getting my blog backed up and moved into WordPress. That took some time and I had to fight through some issues. But it is done now and I think I am okay with it. One thing is I already received one spam comment. But I am going to keep them from being posted to my blog, I hope.

I also quit the web development stuff I had going. I pretty much submitted my first and last invoice for the sign up process. I then said I was giving my notice. I haven’t heard back from them. That surprises me. I figured they would at least try to find out what the deal was. I wrote some of my thoughts down about why I wanted to quit.

Specs from the company that are nothing more than screen shots. No direction about expected behaviour.

We are in a development period that I believe to be fundamentally detrimental to the overall final product. We are being told to develop the site, only to have a consultant group change some foundations to the site, which requires changes in multiple locations. These are such things that should have been done well before starting the site. In fact I asked about the free userlevel months ago and I was told it wouldn’t happen.

What I saw with the signup process worries me that people are not going to be willing to listen to ideas. Some of my suggestions have never been been considered and returned to me.

I had some initial concerns in this area. I spoke with several people who are elsewhere in the industry about my concerns and I got many opinions. Most of which I agreed with.

So I have been on edge over the above, but frankly Tim’s e-mail to me and multiple others about his inability to reach me after hours was the final thing. I tried to speak to David about it, but he has yet to return my phone call placed on Jan twenty-third.

I felt leaving while the sign up process was being completed was not the right thing to do. It is now complete (except for two images). I sent an e-mail to David on jan 30th about getting these two images. I have not received the images, nor an e-mail back. As of this time, I do not want to continue to wait for a response from David, I am sending all the code back, and someone else can insert the two images which will complete the sign up process… outside of the integration with the shopping cart (Page 5)….

Maybe they will ask, but I don’t know. I was disappointed by the way things were going. The money just wasn’t there. The payrate was good, but I was not seeing enough work and the work I was getting was being hurried and there was a lot of un-needed stress about getting things done on some random deadline.

I then spent time dinking around on the computer this evening. I also had training in Colfax today. It was actually in Steptoe for Colfax fire. I went down early and worked on some stuff at the SO, getting tickets written up and updating the hours for the month of January for everyone.

It is sort of a big day, I left a job, but it wasn’t like I quit because I really wasn’t doing a whole lot.

Continuing the Case

February 1st, 2010

This morning I got up late, but it wasn’t too bad. I threw my uniform on and ran downstairs. Melcher came to pick me up for our second day working the big case.

We completed the search warrant and went before a judge to get it signed. Then we executed the search warrant. We found the things we were looking for.

Then the fun part. We had to go to the SO and spent the next couple hours working on some more paperwork. This time we had to enter everything into evidence. That means lots of computer and paperwork.

It was about four o’clock PM when we were done. We started to work the road waiting to get into contact with more people who were involved in the case.

We ran some traffic on SR one-ninety-five while waiting for that. Finally around nine o’clock they came home. We made contact with them. We were able to chat with them and sent them along their way.

I also got a warrant arrest this evening. I wrote two tickets. I also got a notice about a ticket I previously wrote is being contested in court. So I will finally get to go to court! I am looking forward to seeing the process that I will have to go through.

When I got home I went to Safeway and picked up some pop and water. I didn’t have money, but a guy who works at Safeway, Todd, knew me and he paid for my stuff as long as I would pay him back tomorrow.